Jul. 7, 2012

Wausau Police Officer Ben Graham and Wausau City Council member Karen Kellbach stand in the 900 block of North 10th Avenue, where residents teamed up with the city to root out drugs and crime. / (T’xer Zhon Kha/Wausau Daily Herald)

A word from the editor

The Wausau Daily Herald today continues an initiative called “Greater Wausau” with a report on a neighborhood’s efforts to combat drugs, blight and crime. Ongoing coverage will celebrate the good things about life in the greater Wausau area, present a call to action to address community issues and hold decision-makers accountable for building a Greater Wausau.Look for Greater Wausau coverage throughout the Daily Herald in print, online and on our mobile sites.Your feedback is appreciated. Call Editor Mark Treinen at 715-845-0655 or email mtreinen@wdhprint.com if you have story ideas or thoughts about this initiative.

Warning signs of drugs in your neighborhood

» Hand-to-hand exchanges between a resident and a visitor.» People coming in and out of house quickly and often.» Vehicles visiting frequently with no apparent purpose.Source: Wausau Police Department Officer Ben Graham

It began a couple of years ago with what seemed like minor concerns: stereos blaring, loud parties, traffic coming and going at all hours.

When it got worse last summer -- the trash piling up outside two homes on Wausau's North 10th Avenue, yards going untended, and the traffic growing even louder and more frequent -- neighbors started talking to one another.

And they decided they weren't going to stand for it anymore.

Most homes in the neighborhood are modest, ranch-style houses owned by singles or retired couples. Shade trees line the streets, and it's not uncommon to see neighbors chatting while grilling out or tending their lawns.

So it was easy for most to spot the trouble houses -- one had an upholstered couch sitting on the lawn and a rundown trailer on the driveway with seemingly homeless people living in it, neighbors said. The other had a broken window and overgrown shrubs. And both had dozens of visitors going in and out all day, leading neighbors to suspect the homes -- both rental properties -- housed drug dealers.

"We were having a lot of drug dealing going on in our neighborhood," said Harold Pyan, who lives in the 900 block of North 10th Avenue. "We decided we had enough."

Fed up with the noise, the trash and the crime, the group invited its City Council representative, Karen Kellbach, to get together and talk about the problems. With Kellbach's help, residents, police and the city mayor sat down together and mapped out a plan -- a plan to have neighbors and police cooperate to pester and pressure the crooks mercilessly.

Wausau Police Department Chief Jeff Hardel said he has never seen neighbors so committed to collecting evidence to help police catch drug dealers. Within weeks, police had arrested three people on drug charges at a problem house and made themselves such pains in the neck that the traffic and parties had slowed.

Neighbors were ready to declare victory, and the city was set to use the plan as a model for other problem neighborhoods in Wausau.

Then, on June 19, two men allegedly left the home at 913 N. 10th Ave. and beat another Wausau man, Kerby Kniess, to death with a baseball bat just a few blocks away. The neighborhood awoke to find police cars and crime-scene technicians scouring the house for evidence.

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Now, the neighborhood is wondering whether its work is finished or if it really has just begun.

On the decline

One North 10th Avenue resident who has lived on the block for years said the area once was "a nice, quiet neighborhood." Then, about five years ago, something changed. She started hearing loud noises late at night, when a seeming revolving door of tenants began renting the two houses in the 900 block of North 10th Avenue.

"We have a couple of rental properties that are attracting the wrong type of people," said the woman who, like many other neighborhood residents, was too frightened of retaliation to use her name for this story.

Increasingly worried about the late-night parties in the block's problem homes and other concerns, she began double-checking that her doors are locked every night -- a ritual she rarely practiced years ago.

The neighborhood, she said, was once filled with homeowners who mostly kept to themselves and trimmed their yards regularly. When some homes turned to rentals, the loud parties and neglected yards began.

The pace of neighborhood annoyances picked up last summer, residents said, when two groups in particular moved to the problem homes. Cars often were parked on the lawn at one, neighbors said. Bags of garbage collected outside of both houses and each had a mattress on its lawn at some point, neighbors said.

A Wausau Daily Herald reporter tried several times to contact residents of the two problem homes and their landlord; her messages were not returned and tenants refused to speak with her.

Neighborhood residents told Kellbach the two houses were nuisances and eyesores. Dogs barked ferociously throughout the day and scared residents. Cars squealing out of the neighborhood after suspected drug deals would shake residents from their sleep. Some suspected that people were living in the trailer parked outside one house. Kellbach said neighbors watched as the residents would regularly drain sewage from the trailer on the driveway.

Pyan, 65, lives on the 900 block of 10th Avenue and moved to the home he rents about a year ago. Pyan immediately noticed 10 or 15 people a day going in and out of one of the problem houses. He often was startled from his sleep during the night by loud, frequent parties. He never had a run-in with any of the suspected drug dealers but was always worried about what might happen with drug users coming in and out of the neighborhood.

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"I just didn't like what was going on because when you're among activities like that, anything can happen," Pyan said. "You never know what's going to happen with that kind of behavior."

Others worried about the look of the neighborhood and their own property values declining because of the two homes.

"All we want to do, we just want to clean up our neighborhood," said one resident who has lived in the neighborhood for years.

For the most part, neighbors kept quiet and didn't complain to one another, silently suffering through sleepless nights. Some said they called police but the problems seemed to go unanswered. Others were frustrated but never complained to authorities.

By late last summer, though, neighbors decided they had had enough.

A group effort

Last fall, about a dozen neighbors from the blocks of North Fifth Avenue to 10th Avenue started to meet monthly and discuss the problems they saw taking over the neighborhood. The group called Kellbach in February.

When Kellbach attended a neighborhood meeting in March, the block vented to her.

"I couldn't believe what was going on in that neighborhood," Kellbach recalled during an interview in June. "There was no sleep in that neighborhood."

Kellbach scheduled a meeting for two weeks later, so Mayor Jim Tipple and Wausau Police Chief Jeff Hardel could hear the complaints themselves -- and hopefully, find a way to address them.

In the past, neighbors who did try to contact authorities were frustrated by clerks and dispatchers who answered their calls but took no action, or city inspectors who did nothing about the dilapidated homes. The meeting in mid-March marked the first time residents shared complaints of drugs and crime to police, face-to-face.

But after the meeting, residents were skeptical.

"We thought, 'Are they really going to do anything for us?'" said a resident who attended the meeting.

Twenty-four hours later, those concerns were answered. Wausau police officers walked through the neighborhood and knocked on every door in the area and asked residents to write down their concerns and observations about the neighborhood's problems.

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"We were in awe," said a resident who attended the meeting.

Police promised to work on busting suspected drug dealers in the neighborhood, Kellbach said, and residents were elated with the quick response. Kellbach and police gave worried residents cellphone numbers so neighbors could call with concerns at nearly any hour. The department assigned about five officers to a special unit that worked on patrolling the neighborhood and developing relationships with the neighbors.

"My phone was ringing when I got home that day," Kellbach recalled. "I could just hear a change in their voices -- there was hope."

Police made their presence obvious. Officers knocked on doors of problem houses and told residents to clean up their acts.

Squad cars cruised the area almost every day. Deputy Chief Bryan Hilts said police would stop cars traveling in the area for nearly any violation -- a loud muffler or improper turn. One resident said that, prior to the neighborhood's call to action, he wouldn't see a patrol car in the area more than once or twice a week.

"Police were planting themselves on the street for hours," the man said.

A new partnership

Hardel -- who himself was one of the officers who first brought community-oriented policing strategies to the city years ago -- said officers and residents became a team at that meeting. Both wanted the neighborhood cleaned up. Both wanted the bad guys arrested if they were committing crimes, or run off if they weren't. Both agreed to work together to make those things happen.

Residents tirelessly gathered license plate numbers and descriptions of late-night visitors coming in and out of the 912 N. 10th Ave. house. Some even took video that police could use as evidence.

"We have a lot of neighborhoods that request assistance and believe there's drug dealing in their neighborhood," Hardel said. "The difference with this neighborhood group is that these neighbors wanted to be involved; they wanted action. I don't ever remember a time where we've had a neighborhood group step up and say, 'What do you need us to do, because we're tired of this.'"

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Wausau Police Department Officer Ben Graham worked with residents on the North 10th Avenue block. He said officers used a mix of approaches -- from undercover policing to gathering intelligence from willing neighbors -- to identify criminals in the area.

It worked. By May 31, police had enough reason to search the home at 912 N. 10th Ave., and just as neighbors feared and predicted, police said they found drugs inside.

Steven W. Reynolds and Stephanie D. Reynolds, both of whom lived at 912 N. 10th Ave., were two of the three arrested on drug charges as part of the sting, Hardel said. Steven Reynolds was arrested on charges of cocaine manufacturing, drug trafficking and bail jumping, among other charges. Stephanie Reynolds is in jail on a probation hold. Social services took the Reynolds' children because the couple was allegedly selling drugs while the children were home, Hardel said. The Wausau Police Department has not released the name of a third person identified in the sting.

"We were so excited," said one resident, after learning of the raid and arrests.

Like others, the resident believed the arrests were an indication that the neighborhood was turning around. Victory was at hand.

The murder

Their victory celebration was short-lived. Just two weeks later, police were back -- this time swarming the area and searching 913 N. 10th Ave. Rumors circulated that two men suspected of killing another Wausau man -- Kerby Kniess -- had been hanging around the neighborhood the day the murder was committed.

"I was upset," said the woman, who rolls her eyes and looks tired as she talks about the seemingly never-ending disturbances on her block. "I was at home when the police came."

The rumors were true. Warren Krohn, 20, was living at the 913 N. 10th Ave. home and told police that he and Zachary Froehlich, 18, of Wausau, were at his house before and after the two beat Kniess to death with a baseball bat, according to court records. Police were searching the home June 19 for evidence connected to the slaying.

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One resident in the neighborhood recalls feeling tricked upon seeing a block full of police swarming the 913 N. 10th Ave. home that day. After the May 31 drug bust, the resident thought most of the block's problems were on their way to being resolved.

"Every time we think we're making progress, we just keep getting hit upside the head," the resident said.

Still, there has been improvement -- improvement that Hardel attributes to neighborhood involvement and intense police work. In fact, the changes are so profound that Hardel's staff intends to use the neighborhood as a model for how communities can team with police to address problems.

The house at 912 N. 10th Ave. today is missing a front door but no longer has a tenant or suspected drug dealers living there. The trailer that once leaked sewage now sits neatly in the driveway and is legally registered, a neighbor said.

"I think we made some great progress," one of the neighborhood group members said. "We still have some to go though, yet."

If nothing else, the partnership between police, the city and residents is stronger than it has ever been. Squad cars still cruise the streets. Upset residents have the cellphone numbers of the district's City Council member and police officers to call for a quick response to a neighborhood problem.

"I think the police are approachable; they've all been very cooperative," said one resident. "When we call Karen, she's right there."